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She didn t have to tell me. Rick s entrance into our bedroom had been
announced with a crash. Our dresser is under the window, and in coming through
it, Rick had sent a lamp to the floor.
I heard him cackle.  Your hearts! he screamed.  I m gonna fucking eat them!
And I thought about Paul and Angie, about how sorry I was to have done this
to them, to have allowed their parents to be taken away from them, much too
soon, and in such an ugly fashion. Would my dad take them in, or maybe Sarah s
parents? Or would Angie turn into an adult overnight, look after Paul herself,
tell her grandparents that she could handle this on her own? It would be like
her to try, I thought. She was tough, and proud, and she d feel honor bound to
look after her little brother all by herself.
Rick was out of the bedroom and running down the hall. I saw his shadow fall
across the top of the stairs.
This was it.
 Sarah, I said. Not a scream. I just wanted to say her name. And to make one
final apology:  I m sorry.
Rick came flying down the stairs. I don t mean he was running quickly, taking
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the steps two or three at a time. He was airborne.
His head was thrust out well ahead of his body. His arms were outstretched,
the knife forging out ahead of him in his right hand. His feet were off the
ground. If he d worn a cape, it would have been flowing and rippling in the
breeze behind him.
His mouth was open in astonishment. This, evidently, was not how he d planned
to come down this flight of stairs. Now his arms were waving, his legs
kicking, trying to make some sort of purchase, to regain his footing.
As he pitched forward, his right arm hit one of the lower steps first, his
elbow cracked, and his forearm snapped back, angling the knife toward himself.
And then his neck connected with the upturned blade, and the weight of his
body drove it deep into him, and his mouth opened even wider, but no sound
came out.
He came to rest two steps from the bottom, his arms and legs twisted at
unnatural angles. From his neck, the blood spilled forth as if from an open
tap. The gathering pool spread from the second step and down to the first.
And tumbling after him, like an afterthought, like a second punch line to a
joke you thought was over, came Paul s backpack. It bounced a couple of times,
then settled next to Rick s head in the blood.
28
the man who delivers papers toour neighborhood showed up not long after that.
He didn t even get close to our door. Who could blame him? Here s what he
found:
A man in handcuffs sitting out on our front step.
An abandoned Beetle parked on the front lawn, door open, engine still
running.
From inside the house, a woman s screams, a man s cries for help.
From the trunk of a small car parked at the end of our driveway, even louder
screams. They sounded like a man s.
The paper man (there are almost no boys anymore; papers must be picked up in
the middle of the night and delivered before six, and this was a sight you
wouldn t have wanted a young lad to see) went back to his car, where he kept a
cell phone, and called for help.
What a production.
Two police cars and an ambulance converged on the scene within five minutes.
When the ambulance attendants, who, I m told, looked upon our house with a
certain familiarity, arrived, they were directed first to the trunk of the car
by the paper guy. But the handcuffed man sitting on our front step, Don
Greenway, advised them not to think, even for a moment, of opening that trunk.
You might, he suggested, want to call someone from the zoo.
I was able to reach up and unlock the door to let everyone in. The police
came in first, putting some muscle behind the door so as to move me out of the
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way, duct-taped to the overturned chair as I was. Their eyes had barely landed
on me when they saw Rick at the bottom of the stairs, a much more convincing
dead person than I ever was in that same spot, a very long time ago.
They must have thought, at that moment, that whoever d done that to Rick had
been the same person who d put me in the chair, but gradually, the truth began
to emerge. I told them to please check on my wife, in the kitchen, and one
officer ran ahead to do just that while another stayed with me, wanting to
know who else was in the house, how many hurt.
 There s one guy out there in the trunk, I said as the officer cut me out of
the chair,  but it may be too late for him. And there s another one, not hurt,
but running around the neighborhood someplace with his hands cuffed behind his
back.
 There s already a guy here in handcuffs.
 There s a second one. It s a long story.
Once I was free, I was on my feet and running to the kitchen where Sarah was
now standing, and we threw our arms around each other and started to cry. I
held on to her for a very long time.
 Mom? Dad?
It was Paul, calling from out front. The police wouldn t let him inside. We
both ran out to see him and embraced him, so happy that we were all alive,
except that Paul had no reason to think that all of us being alive was in any
way an extraordinary thing.
 What s going on? he asked.  What the hell happened to your face?
 You re a hero, I said, hugging him again.  And you don t even know it.
 Huh?
It was my first time outside of the house since the police had arrived, and
it was wild. At least half a dozen police cars, three ambulances, a fire
truck, just in case. A couple of SUVs with TV station logos splashed across
the sides. And nearly everyone on the street was outside, standing in their
yards, gawking. It was the first time I d ever seen the housecoat lady outside
without a hose in her hand.
Trixie approached me tentatively as I stood out there with Paul.
 Oh God, she whispered.  All hell broke loose.
 Kinda, I said.  I need you to get me that ledger.
She nodded and slipped away. I saw Earl across the street, standing by the
back of his pickup. Our eyes met, and he nodded, as if to say  I m glad you re
okay, man, but if you don t mind, I m going to stay on this side of the street
while the cops are around. That was just fine with me.
Sarah grabbed one of the ambulance attendants as he walked past, and said,
 My husband s been hurt.
I recognized him as the male attendant who d come to our house during The
Backpack Incident. While he might have remembered coming to this address, he
made no suggestion that we had met before. My face was too badly bruised and
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bloodied to be recognizable.
They ended up taking both of us to the hospital. Even though Sarah showed no [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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